The present invention broadly relates to a new and improved safety apparatus or equipment for an externally powered weapon or firing system including a weapon barrel and a positively reciprocating or to-and-fro moving breechblock which can be locked in its forwardmost position.
In its more particular aspects the present invention relates to new and improved safety apparatus or equipment for a multi-barrel weapon mounted for recoil movement at a cradle and displaceable from a forward position into a rearward position under recoil action of the weapon. There is provided a weapon housing containing a rotor rotatable therein at which a cluster of barrels is arranged. Each- weapon barrel is provided with a respective breechblock which can be locked to the weapon barrel prior to firing a round.
An apparatus of this kind is known, for example, from German Patent Publication No. 1,809,699, published Aug. 7, 1969, and serves to interrupt series firing of an automatic rapid firing weapon in the nature of a Gatling gun in the event that a cartridge or a cartridge case is not withdrawn from the cartridge chamber of a related weapon barrel. In this known apparatus there are present means for preventing further supply of projectiles to the cartridge chamber of the weapon barrel in the event that a cartridge which has not yet been withdrawn is present in the cartridge chamber after rotation of the weapon barrel cluster. Such means comprises a sensing or feeler element which prevents the forward or advance motion of the breechblock when such sensing element contacts the cartridge which has not been withdrawn from the cartridge chamber. For this purpose there is present a deflector or switching structure which may assume a first position in which the forward or advance motion of the breechblock is prevented and a second position in which the forward or advance motion of the breechblock is enabled, the deflector or switching structure being coupled to the sensing element.
This prior art device has the disadvantage that premature unlocking of the breechblock cannot be prevented in the event of an ignition delay or hangfire of a cartridge. Thus, there exists the danger that in the presence of such a condition the propellant charge of the cartridge is undesirably ignited after unlocking of the breechblock. When a cartridge is still ignited or fired after unlocking of the breechblock, this may result in destruction of essential parts of the weapon. Furthermore, the operating or gunnery personnel for the weapon are endangered.
In a multi-barrel weapon in the nature of a Gatling gun a cluster or group of barrels is mounted to a rotor rotating in a weapon housing about the central axis of the weapon barrel cluster. Such rotor contains guide tracks or paths arranged in longitudinal direction of the weapon, each guide track guiding a related breechblock operatively associated with a predetermined barrel of the weapon barrel cluster. The cartridges are first rammed into the weapon barrels by the forward and rearward travel of the breechblocks along the guide tracks. After weapon firing, the empty cartridge cases are withdrawn from the weapon barrels by the same breechblocks and ejected while the rotor rotates about its lengthwise axis. To displace the breechblocks between their foremost, locked position and their rear position in which the empty cartridge cases are ejected, there is present a cam follower roll at each breechblock. An elliptic control cam is present at the weapon housing within which the rotor is mounted and the cam follower roll engages with the control cam. Furthermore, there is present a cartridge infeed device for feeding or loading cartridges from a supply magazine into the aforementioned weapon housing where the cartridges are engaged by the breechblocks. Each breechblock is positively reciprocated due to the elliptically curved track or control cam.